THE NEW YORKER merely of the manipulation of sounds. Another hook of the sort, Deryck Cooke's "The Language of Music" ( Oxford), has been lying on mv desk for some time. (It was publIshed in 1959.) I have not prevIously mentIoned it because a cursory inspection of It showed that Cooke was promoting what I then considered the dubious idea that music is literally a language, with an identifiahle vocahulary expressIng con- crete moods and emotions-a position that was once maintained, courageously but not altogether convincingly, In Al- bert Schweitzer's monumental book on Bach. Lately, however, I have had time to study Mr. Cooke's book more thoroughly, and though it leaves a great many things unexplained, some of it now seems to me fairly persuasive To begin with, Mr. Cooke is an immensely learned musician, who can call to mInd thousands of examples, ranging from about 1400 to the present, to prove his points. His method is apparently induc- tive; that is, he cites great numbers of instances in which composers have used specific melodic, harmonic, and rhyth- mic patterns to express identical emo- tions, and draws from them laws that might constitute a sort of dictionary, or phrase book, of musical language. I say "sort of" because even Mr. Cooke does not regard music as a language of actual r A concepts-just as a language of emo- tion. In pinning down the precise emo- tions conveyed by given sequences and comhinations of notes, he has gone fur- ther than any other writer I have read Some of his more obvious conclusions- for example, that bugle-call figures have a Joyful, courageous, and stimulating sound, and that minor formations ex- press sadness, while major ones are more apt to convey feelings of elation-are fairly familiar. But he goes far beyond these, taking apart the details of m u- sical structure to show that certain movements between notes or certain harmonIc combinations have been used by the great masters to express specific psychological states, and that this has been done with extraordinary unanimi- ty. Putting these psychological states into words IS, he admits, a task fraught with ambiguities and haziness, but that is not because music is either ambiguous or hazy. It is because literary language is too ambiguous to express the enor- mous variety of emotional meanings that music conveys, and his literary equiva- lents-longing, grief, inertia, heroism, brooding, despair, pathos, anguish, con- solation, triumph, serenity, and so on- are only crude approximations of these richer and subtler meanings. Mr. Cooke 165 ':" . ;.){... ,< 't' .,..... . __Y'"" y. . . ' :. .: DIRECTED ; T ' ", THE :$. TOM.:M-Y DORSEY ORCHESTRA D'O',NAHUE < f: < :; , '"" 1.;' ."'''' :<f :, 'r, , " , .. , .. :)0. ... A :.< H.::' JJ :Á,:N::N"lË -:"'T:1 l::Ö::Ní-;A:S &." L,l\llR'Y O':J3,:ItIE:N::: ..... ....... ....:. .. .. ". .y.- .... " '" . 'j ............... Y-"-"-"-"- "-" ,............ '!f ,'*:; "^ f D II $ "..J( .-c 1M . ::'" r AND INTRODUCING :.<c ..:0... << .... ;ø, Q -.> . ......". .. . . "" ":Po ): x -=..-= .: .. ... .. ... .... TH E PI..E D.. "P:..I::"P,ER":S' FRANK SINATRA JR. . A il L *' <. Â E1 D ,. .... AT THE ROYAL BOX 9:30 and 12:15 Shows RESERVATIONS: PETER L T 1-1000 Srnericana OF NEW YORK OCTOBER 7TH * BUDDY GRECO \J t <, 1 , *"" .. *' " CLJ _ Á f/ . . )2I)) ø 1'rUJ/te ) "JoY> ) p jPlli arl1 v ., 'A + From Copenhagen > , ' , 'f \ : ! !f , t ' H ::- i : I I i \,m ,'. >$ ..p - , . 1iW ' tl',\ mVf! \ Nwe name few a be r ÞA . ('ãns ,*'1 då ID > .!!tl' . " '1' · ' <,:, " ".vc>." SKÅL] fi . " People in 159 countries enjoy Carlsberg-The Glorious Beer of Copenhagen, Denmark 1 Purveyors to the Royal Courts of Denmark, Greece and Sweden. Brewed and bottled by the Carlsberg Breweries, Copenhagen, Denmark. Carlsberg Agency, Incorporated, 104 East 40th Street. New York 16. New York